They were all shocked on Wednesday when they saw that the main stage of Dance Festival Tomorrowland was going up in flames. The tens of thousands of visitors who already arrived in Boom, south of Antwerp on Thursday – one day before the start of the festival – looked forward to the decision of the mayor that afternoon. Could the three -day party continue? Or would the provisional stage be rejected by the fire brigade?
Two girlfriends from Taiwan see their long -planned party weekends go up in smoke. “I hope we don’t regret our journey.”
A young German woman squeaks: “I am like death for fire,” before she slips into the bus.
A Mexican fantasizes about a form of compensation (“free beer?”) For the missed main show.
This is something you only experience once in your life
An American and a Brit are preparing for the best edition ever – also a form of compensation: “All acts will now want to give everything to make the Main Stage forgotten.”
Two students from Hasselt look forward to their volunteer job, with which they get free access to the festival. “We just hope it will continue.”
The main Prodium is the great tractor of the festival. It worked on two years.
Photo Belga/AFP
Just after sixes, the redeeming news comes through a press conference on Thursday evening: Mayor Jeroen Baert van Boom sees no objection, the site is safe. A spokesperson for the festival explains that it is still unclear how the loss of the colossal stage – it was two hundred meters long and it has been worked on for two years – will be taken care of. Perhaps there will be one big emergency stage, she says, or stages spread over different locations.
The cause of the fire is not yet known. There was speculation about fireworks guns, about LED screens, about the omnipresent styrofoam. What is clear: the whole decor is burned. Belgian media expressed images of excavators all day long with their grabs the bare pattern with the dimensions of a cathedral.
Tang
On Thursday afternoon the trains from the direction of Antwerp follow each other faster and faster, and it seems that more people come out of every train. In the narrow underpass from Boom Station to Statiestraat, it thunders from the Rolkofferatel. With an iron logistics from buses and girls from the scouts who lead the crowd in the right direction, around 38,000 people are brought to the campsite this day.
They are school examples of what sociologists anywheres Call people who feel at home everywhere. A day ago the Taiwanese Tai Chia Wen was still in Beekse Bergen near Awakenings. Last week Robby Stewart from Colorado danced in Ibiza. And last month, Shalev Shoam and Ilay Cohen were still in a club in Kefar Sava at Tel Aviv, at a kind of anticipation party for Tomorrowlandgoers.
Many visitors are permanent festival -goers and follow the necessities: get a strap, look up a tent and some food.
Photo Fred Debrock
The people who work at Tomorrowland are also happy that the festival is going on.
Photo Fred Debrock
A total of 38,000 people come to the festival.
Photo Tom Goyvaerts / Belga / AFP
They all just finished the festival routine: taking transport, getting entry, getting a town at the campsite. They have the universal supplies in their bag: sunburn, earplugs, fan, neck pillow. When they are settled, they go to the surrounding places – Boom, Rumst, Aartselaar, Reet, Kontich – to buy and eat bottles of water.
They have all deposited a different amount for the admission ticket. Elly Warwick and her friend from Wales have each paid 400 euros, plus 300 each for the flight from Bristol. Shalev Soam and his friends did not decide until April that they would go, and they had to pay 1,000 euros per person, including one hotel stay in Brussels. But nobody complains about the prices. “This is something you only experience once in your life,” says Ilay Cohen.
Deeper meaning
Tai Chi Wen thinks that the near-disaster will only benefit the quality of the festival. “It will be spectacular,” says the Taiwanese. “This edition will automatically get a deeper meaning,” says the Norwegian Jannecke Martins, with her half gray, half pink hair.
Uriel Dimas, who came from Mexico via New York and Amsterdam, still pulls a stuffy face on Thursday afternoon. If the festival already continues, he says, it will definitely be less than previous editions. “The Main Stage is the place where it happens. Lara Thijs and Selena Switten from Hasselt are also very disappointed about that.” I am very artistic, “says Thijs. “I was just looking forward to the beauty of the main stage.”
Even though visitors do not know if the festival will go ahead, they all travel to Boom on Thursday.
Photo Fred Debrock
The alternative main stage is definitely ready on Saturday, but on Friday it will be improvising, says Debby Wilmsen, spokesperson for Tomorrowland, at the press conference. She can’t give a clarity on Thursday evening about what that will look like. In the worst case, it may mean that the people who have a ticket for the campsite are not allowed to go to the festival site on Friday and have to enjoy themselves with the acts on the camping site.
Compensation? We are really not working on that yet
Sofie Laermans from Tienen is sitting in a chip shop with a friend in the evening. It is especially disappointed that his favorite act, the Brit Sub Focus, which would be on the main stage for the first time, now has to settle for a less spectacular place. He lives in Rumst and just sleeps at home until the festival starts, she is staying at the campsite. “Very bad,” she says when she has penetrated that she might have been sentenced to her tent all day on Friday. “I don’t know anyone else there. A waste of the expensive card.”
Tomorrowland spokesman Wilmsen on the VRT said to the question of a Flemish journalist about possible compensation or compensation: “We are really not working on that yet.”
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